On Saturday night I was about to watch the 6 o'clock news when Channel 9 had a "breaking" story that Michael Clarke and Lara Bingle had ended their relationship. Wanting to escape this and find some actual news I switched Channel 7 to find that they too were covering precisely the same "story"; then on SBS at half past 6, they too were leading with the same thing.
We were also bombarded with a story about an elephant called "Mr Shuffles", and with something about some fashion show in Paris. My reaction to all of this was to use that most magical of devices, the remote control... only to re bombarded elsewhere.
Now I hope that I've come to the wrong conclusion here but either there literally was nothing newsworthy over the weekend, or if the media are merely selling to and are therefore a relfection of society, then I am quite disappointed.
I bet that the only reason that the media cares about this is because they can sell more media and advert space (that is of course their whole raison d'être) and the best way to sell media is to publish something depraved if they can get away with it.
The thing is that, if the media is trying to sell us something, then there must be a ready market for it if it keeps on trying to push it.
From where I stand, I don't care, I don't want to care, I don't want to see, I don't want to know and I'm jolly well sick of it all.
The real news, because you couldn't find it is that:
- The Israeli plans to build settlements in the West Bank has finally been derided by the USA as hurting the peace process.
- Greece is looking for a €300bn bailout bond from the EU, possibly faces the chance of being expelled and that there is potentially a bigger problem lurking in Spain.
- Two Frenchmen taken hostage on Nov 22 last year have finally been freed in Dafur.
- The US Federal Reserve is expected to be given greater prudential regulation to help ward off the conditions which led to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis
- Kristina Keneally has wasted a stack of money in producing a pamphlet broadcasting that the NSW State Government has achieved in her first 100 days in office
- We are probably going to a Federal Election on the 14th of August this year.
It's utterly amazing and hopelessly disappointing that actual important news that has real effects on the world, doesn't even make the 6 o'clock news, because fashion, models and elephants are more "important".
If the world stops spinning tomorrow, I'm jumping off.
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